Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#31

Post by itcrowd »

Yhippa wrote: post #27
itcrowd wrote: post #24

Running the numbers here. WeWork has 12.500 employees with 500 locations. That means on average 25 employees per location. That sounds absurd for workspace management, especially since construction / renovations / cleaning are most likely outsourced. Let's cut them some slack and assume that half the workforce is focused on expansion (6250 employees) and that one in 25 are secretarial or HR (i.e. not related to daily…

What is the right number of workers per location?

There's not one number, obviously. But if you look at a large hotel, maybe 10? Then again, WeWork isn't nearly as large as a large hotel and doesn't provide equivalent services. >10 on average per location (being generous!) is overkill.

(Remember, excluding cleaning staff)

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#32

Post by x0x0 »

itcrowd wrote: post #24

Running the numbers here. WeWork has 12.500 employees with 500 locations. That means on average 25 employees per location. That sounds absurd for workspace management, especially since construction / renovations / cleaning are most likely outsourced. Let's cut them some slack and assume that half the workforce is focused on expansion (6250 employees) and that one in 25 are secretarial or HR (i.e. not related to daily…

When I was in a WeWork (not a good experience fwiw; not horrific, but definitely not good), the cleaning staff seemed to be WeWork employees. Direct hires too, which I liked.

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#33

Post by itcrowd »

crummy wrote: post #28
itcrowd wrote: post #24

Running the numbers here. WeWork has 12.500 employees with 500 locations. That means on average 25 employees per location. That sounds absurd for workspace management, especially since construction / renovations / cleaning are most likely outsourced. Let's cut them some slack and assume that half the workforce is focused on expansion (6250 employees) and that one in 25 are secretarial or HR (i.e. not related to daily…

Surely WeWork has most of their employees in just a few HQs? I'd guess they have a lot less than 25 people per WeWork coworking office.

Sorry in case I wasn't clear. I meant that, on average, 25 WeWork employees manage / oversee a single WeWork location, not that they actually work in that location.

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#34

Post by wott »

itcrowd wrote: post #31
Yhippa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the right number of workers per location?

There's not one number, obviously. But if you look at a large hotel, maybe 10? Then again, WeWork isn't nearly as large as a large hotel and doesn't provide equivalent services. >10 on average per location (being generous!) is overkill. (Remember, excluding cleaning staff)

Do not forget that you need about 5 employees to fill a single 24/24 365/365 work position. About 3 for a 2x8 position.

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#35

Post by eberkund »

itcrowd wrote: post #31
Yhippa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the right number of workers per location?

There's not one number, obviously. But if you look at a large hotel, maybe 10? Then again, WeWork isn't nearly as large as a large hotel and doesn't provide equivalent services. >10 on average per location (being generous!) is overkill. (Remember, excluding cleaning staff)

I work in a company which rents a floor in a large downtown office tower and I think the number of people working there is less than 10 including cleaning staff. There is 1 security guard who I see around often and someone is usually in the management office and at the end of the day a pair of janitors come around.

I've also visited WeWork offices before and you're right that they have a lot of extra employees. They usually have multiple people at the front desk checking people in, then there are people who are going around to make sure the kegs are full and the shared spaces haven't detoriated into pigstys (this is different from a typical office where Janitors come around once a day or sometimes less than that).

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#36

Post by rosybox »

wott wrote: post #34
itcrowd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not one number, obviously. But if you look at a large hotel, maybe 10? Then again, WeWork isn't nearly as large as a large hotel and doesn't provide equivalent services. >10 on average per location (being generous!) is overkill. (Remember, excluding cleaning staff)

Do not forget that you need about 5 employees to fill a single 24/24 365/365 work position. About 3 for a 2x8 position.

At least at my location in SF, WeWork is not open during non-business hours. You can have office access if you as a business are leasing office space, but there's nobody there.

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#38

Post by the_narrator »

dehrmann wrote: post #18
Mockapapella wrote: post #5

I first heard of WeWork a few months ago. Seemed like just another company (admittedly I did very little to look into it). How is it that this company went from filing for public offering to laying off up to 25% of it's work force (along with a ton of other things I can't think of specifically at the moment) in just a few short weeks?

> How is it that this company went from filing for public offering to laying off up to 25% of it's work force...in just a few short weeks? The wewtf link someone else posted is good, but essentially, it was burning through cash in order to grow. Its private investors (mostly Softbank) were OK with that, but the public markets weren't. They also didn't like management and corporate structure). Not being able to raise…

> The main risk with We is that there's a recession, occupancy drops to 50%, and they're stuck with the leases. But that's not a unique risk.

What is unique is how massively overexposed they are to this risk.

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#39

Post by fullshark »

itcrowd wrote: post #24

Running the numbers here. WeWork has 12.500 employees with 500 locations. That means on average 25 employees per location. That sounds absurd for workspace management, especially since construction / renovations / cleaning are most likely outsourced. Let's cut them some slack and assume that half the workforce is focused on expansion (6250 employees) and that one in 25 are secretarial or HR (i.e. not related to daily…

I have no idea how many people it takes to negotiate global real estate deals, maintain locations, etc.

IWG plc which is their major competitor has 9,000 people so I'm not sure it's that crazy. Might explain why they want to trim 25% also!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWG_plc

Re: WeWork is planning to lay off up to 25% of its employees

#40

Post by martinald »

fullshark wrote: post #39
itcrowd wrote: post #24

Running the numbers here. WeWork has 12.500 employees with 500 locations. That means on average 25 employees per location. That sounds absurd for workspace management, especially since construction / renovations / cleaning are most likely outsourced. Let's cut them some slack and assume that half the workforce is focused on expansion (6250 employees) and that one in 25 are secretarial or HR (i.e. not related to daily…

I have no idea how many people it takes to negotiate global real estate deals, maintain locations, etc. IWG plc which is their major competitor has 9,000 people so I'm not sure it's that crazy. Might explain why they want to trim 25% also! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWG_plc

IWG has ~3500 locations though, so on average say 3 people per location. WeWork has closer to 25, so basically 10x people per location managed.

IWG has a lot of franchised sites, but so does WeWork, as far as I know China + India are franchise operations or something similar.

Post reply on HN